Weird Revisited: Graustarkian Karameikos

This post originally appeared in 2014. I think several Known World/Mystara nations could be fictional countries in the real world. I may do a further post on it.

The Grand Duchy of Karameikos is a small nation in the Balkans on the Adriatic Sea. It has a long history going back to ancient times when the Romans built a fort and founded a trading outpost at Specularum--now Karameikos's capital, Spekla. Since those days, Karameikos has been in the hands of a succession of empires: the Byzantine, the Serbian, the Ottoman, and briefly, the Austro-Hungarian.

The current ruler of Karameikos is Stefan III. He has retained the title of "Grand Duke" despite his nation's liberation from Austria-Hungary. Grand Duke Stefan and most of the nobility trace their families back to Byzantium, but rule over an ethnically mixed populace of Albanians and Serbs, as well as Greeks. The predominant religion is the Orthodox Church of Karameikos, though there are also Muslims and a small number of Roman Catholics.

Believed to be the only photo of the leader of the Black Eagle

One of the greatest threats to modern Karameikos is the terrorist group known as the Black Eagle. The group is vaguely related to Albanian nationalism, but its direct aims seem to be criminality and destabilization of the current government. It's leader is named either Ludwig or Henrich. As his name would suggest, he is said to be of Austrian descent. His primary advisor and bomb-maker is believed to be a former monk named Bargle.

The Mad Monk Bargle, while briefly in custody

This post relates to my previous Ruritanian ruminations--and of course to D&D's Known World.

Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1981 (wk 1 pt 2)

My goal: read DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands around August 6, 1981.

Justice League of America #196: I've read this issue by Conway and Perez/Tanghal I don't know how many times since my childhood, and it still holds up. Batman, Earh-2 Flash, Hourman, the Atom, and Earth-2 Superman get taken out by the Secret Society members, one by one. Now the Ultra-Humanite stands poised to achieve his goal of wiping all the heroes off Earth-2! This is really rock solid 80s superhero comics here. This arc is the best so far of Conway's run.

Krypton Chronicles #3: Bridwell and Swan walk us through more of Superman's family tree, this time without even a hint of conflict in the framing story. We get the story of the Kryptonian Noah and the sort of Krytonian Archimedes--both of which are ancestors of Superman, as is the inventor of the Kryptonian surname. Clark's book is a big hit, which has Morgan Edge thinking about approaching Hawkman for a Thangarian saga.

New Teen Titans #13: Starfire and Raven enjoy a vacation on Paradise Island--that is until the purple ray turns Changeling into an enraged dinosaur--while the guys investigate Mento's disappearance, discovering Madame Rouge's secret base and Robotman. They recover Mento, but he's actually a mole for Rouge. Meanwhile, Wonder Girl gushes over Terry.

Secrets of Haunted House #42: Nothing really great here. There's a witch from the Amazon who gives a Great White Hunter talking boils that look like her face after he rebuffs her advances and kills her, courtesy of Gonzales/Breeding. Then, a humorous barb at comic book fanboys by Sciacca and Bender where the Devil gives said fanboy all the comics in the universe, killing him. I feel like their are some in-jokes here I don't get. 

Skeates/Cullins present a story of a astral projectionist who wants to kill a guy for undisclosed reasons. His heart is too weak to do it, so he trains he successor, who reneges on the deal, but then his ghost gets revenge. Three escaped convicts get turned into the crew of a model slave galley in a story by Kashdan and Pender. 

Wessler and Ayers/Rodin put a murder in a blackly humorous situation after he hides his wife's head in a bowling bag, but then gets caught up in who close call for discovery after another. Finally, Mishkin/Cohn and von Eeden/Mushynsky combine forces for a story of ghosts who switch victims to make it easier to enact their revenge.

Superman #365: "When Kryptonians Clash" Bates and Swan have Supergirl out to get Superman after he cures her of a rare disease. This isn't any slugfest, of course, but another of their puzzle stories and yet another nefarious alien plot. This one at least hints at a conspiracy as the alien is about to reveal who put him up to this when he is vaporized.

In the Rozakis/Schaffenberger "The In-Between Years" backup, Clark is in Metropolis for college, but Superboy has eventually settled anywhere yet, and the world wonders where he's going. Clark in the meantime is having to save folks like reporter Perry White without revealing Superboy's in town. In the end, White catches on though.

Weird War Tales #105: The Creature Commandos are really back, this time. This again hammers DeMatteis' frequent theme for this strip of the people who created the commandos being the real monsters, as Shrieve leads the team in terrorizing and driving out a town full of German sympathizers in the U.S. Shrieve views the situation in black and white, but some of the Commandos have more empathy. 

Kanigher and Yandoc present a tale of a German concentration camp commandant who has his face replaced with a replica of a dead Jewish prisoner and has the prisoner's number tattooed on his arm, so he can escape when the camp is liberated. Heading to South America to connect with Nazi expatriates, he is captured. No one believes his story, and he is gassed and his skin winds up making a lampshade for the leader. Kanigher is back again with Ditko with a story of German conjoined twins, separated after an accident, with one raised in the U.S. and one raised in Germany. By unlikely circumstance they both end up dying on a German U-boat on opposing sides. The final story by Kashdan and Estrada that posits a future where wear is expediently waged by robots playing chess--but the system falls apart when Mauritania cheats by sneaking a human player inside the robot.

Wonder Woman #285: The final showdown with the Red Dragon, and the of his schemes. What I noticed most about this issue is that it perfectly illustrates Conway's vagueness about Wonder Woman's power level. We have her saving the day, by jumping up and redirecting a missile in flight with her strength, then "gliding on air currents" back to the ground. Then she has an extended conflict with the (as far as the story tells us) relatively human but badass Red Dragon. 

The Huntress backup by Levitz and Staton has hints of unresolved sexual tension between Robin and Huntress, which feels a little off since earlier installments have played up the "big brother, little sister" dynamic, but it serves only to leave a thread dangling for another story. Her DA beau, after he's finally out of harm's way from the joker toxin breaks up with her because he can't have a superhero girlfriend.

Broken Compass

Last week I picked up game Broken Compass by the Italian gaming company Two Little Mice from drivethru. It's a rules lite-ish game in the pulp adventure vein. Interestingly, the default setting such as it is is not the 30s pulp heyday of most rpgs, but the 1990s, positioning it as primarily meaning to replicate pulp-derived films like The Mummy (1999) and games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted rather than the original sources. It does, however, have a supplement for the pulp "Golden Age" also available on drivethrurpg.

In brief, it's not unlike YZE games: a d6 dice pool based on attribute (or Field here) plus skill, with a "push" mechanic (called Risk in BC) where you get to reroll. BC looks for sets of matching rolls, though, rather than a target number, and difficulty is ranked by the number of matching dice you need. I think BC intends for characters to fail their roll or at least partially fail a fair amount, though this often doesn't mean that their action has failed. Instead the Fortune Master is meant to apply a complication, setback, or plot twist (though this is mainly for Challenges, not life-threatening Dangers. For a Danger it seems like a failure is more likely to mean a failure).

There is no damage and no "hit points," though Luck points are lost in offsetting life-threatening failures. When all Luck points are gone the character is out of the adventure, though not necessarily dead. There are also Bad Feelings which are conditions that can be applied as a consequence and reduce the dice available for future rolls, and Good Feelings which are their opposites that can be earned to award additional dice.

With its mechanics and campaign structure based around "episodes" and "seasons," what Broken Compass struck me as likely being good for is action/adventure tv shows. Tales of the Gold Monkey, obviously, but with a bit of tweaking The Wild, Wild West or even Buck Rogers. Also, I think this would be a good game to run comic strip or bande dessinée type stuff like Terry and the Pirates or Tintin. Or Popeye!

There were some supplements Kickstartered last year that give alternative settings like Space Opera, Westerns, trad Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Occult Investigators, or Toons, but frustratingly they are not yet even available to nonbackers as digital products. Still, it seems a super-easy system to hack on your own.

There are some areas where it doesn't shine. It isn't really made for long-term play, perhaps; there isn't much advancement to speak of. Also, characters are not really mechanically much different, particularly if they are of similar "types," so if mechanical specialness is important to a player, they probably need to be in a game without too many fellow players.

Those things aside, I think it's well worth checking out and plan to give it a whirl soon. You can download the preview of the game here.

Weird Revisited: Ozian D&D

The original version of this post appeared in 2017 after a bit of discussion on Google+ about Oz-influenced D&D. With two 5e Oz supplements currently available, it seems like it's still a current topic.

From its conception, Oz has been an important (though certainly not the only) influence on the Land of Azurth (particularly for the primary campaign site, Yanth Country), so I've thought some about how Ozian elements can be used to inform D&D fantasy.

First off, it must be acknowledged that "Ozian fantasy" may not be a precisely defined thing. The portrayal of Oz itself changes from the first book to later books by Baum--and to an even greater degree throughout the "Famous Forty" and beyond. Oz in the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is mostly uninhabited, and the places that are inhabited are mostly agrarian, but later books pile on more and more civilization. Baum's vision is of an American fairytale, and so the early books lack standard European-derived or Arabian Nights-inspired creatures and characters: The Tin Man is a woodsman not a knight. Ultimately, however, knights, dragons, and genies all become part of Oz.

(Anyone interested in Baum's American fairytale conception and examples of it in his non-Oz fantasies should check out Oz & Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum by Michael O. Riley)

With that sort of lack of specificity in mind, here are my broad suggestions for how to make a D&D campaign more Ozian:

Lost worlds/hidden kingdoms instead of dungeons: Whether standard D&D or Oz, exploration and discovery plays a part, but D&D's exploration sites are often known areas of material wealth and danger near settled areas that are usually purposefully visited to be exploited. Ozian sites are unknown or little known areas, accidentally discovered, like the lost worlds of adventure fiction.

Animated Simulacra and Talking Animals instead of the usual demihumans: Both D&D and Oz have nonhuman characters, but Oz’s are more individual, not representatives of "races." They also aren't the near-human types of elves, dwarves, and halflings. In fact, all of those races would probably fall under the "human" category in Oz. (In the first book, most Ozites are short like halflings, not just the Munchkins).

Social interaction/comedy of manners instead of combat or stealth: Violence and death sometimes occurs in the Oz books, but conversation and timely escape are the most common ways of dealing with problems. While this may in part be due to them being century plus year-old children's books, some of the exchanges in Dorothy and the Wizard are not dissimilar to the ones that occur in the works of Jack Vance, albeit with much less wit or sophistication. No Ozian villain is too fearsome not to be lectured on manners--at least briefly.

Magical mundane items or magical technology instead of magical weapons: The noncombat orientation of Oz extends to magic items. Magic belts, mirrors, food dishes, etc., occur in Oz but few magic swords or the like that you see in D&D or European legend. Oz blurs the lines between science/technology and magic to a degree. (The examples of this that are more Steampunkian or magictech seem to be unique inventions, however.) Pills and tablets will fantastical (though perhaps not magical in the sense the term would understood in Oz) properties are more common than potions, for instance. In general, foodstuff with fantastic properties, both natural and created, are more common than in D&D.

Faux-America instead Faux-Medieval: Ozian society seems almost 19th century in its trappings, or more precisely, it is a society that is not foreign (except where it specifically means to be) to the a young reader in the early 20th century. It lacks most of the elements of the real world of the 19th Century, however, like industry, social conflict (mostly), and (sometimes) poverty. It also lacks complicated social hierarchies: there is royalty, but no nobility.

5e Hadozee

Another species in my 5e pulp sci-fi game, which will probably be somewhat familiar to those of you that remember Star Frontiers... 

HADOZEE

Hadozee are tall, furry humanoids with manes around their necks and heads and large (sometimes tufted) ears. They evolved from arboreal hunters. Humans sometimes call them "monkeys" because they resemble to a degree simian primates of Old Earth, but this can be considered somewhat derogatory. Two large flaps of skin (a patagium) grow on either side of their bodies, attached along their arms, torso, and legs. A Hadozee can use these as a sort of wing or gliding.

Hadozee have four joints (one more than Humans) on their digits. The inside toe is partially opposable like a thumb, allowing them to grasp things with their feet. The tips of their fingers and toes end in broad, ribbed pads, giving them an excellent grip.

Hadozee communities are divided into large, loosely organized clans. All the members of a clan are related to each other. In the past, clan ties were very strong, and inter-clan conflict was common and often violent. These tendencies have been tempered in the modern age, but hadozee still have a proud warrior tradition.

Homeworld: Verdis 

Average Height: 2.1 meters

Average Weight: 50 kg (male), 60 kg (female)

Phenotypic Variation: Individual hadozee vary in color of their head manes and body fur from glossy black to pale yellow. Their skin color ranges from deep gray to light-tan. Certain colorations tend to run in particular clans or historic geographical groups.

Reproduction: Two sexes, viviparous

Traits:

Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Age. Hadozee mature a little faster than humans, reaching adulthood around age 14. They age similarly though and can live up to 100 years.

Size. You are Medium or Small. You choose the size when you select this species.

Speed. Your walking speed is 30 feet, and you have a climbing speed equal to your walking speed.

Darkvision. Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light and in darkness as if it were dim light. You discern colors in that darkness only as shades of gray.

Dexterous Feet. You can take the Use an Object action as a bonus action.

Glide. If you are not incapacitated or wearing heavy armor, you can extend your skin membranes and glide. When you do so, you can perform the following aerial

maneuvers:

• When you fall at least 30 feet, you can move up to 5 feet horizontally

for every 1 foot you descend.

• When you would take damage from a fall, you can use

your reaction to reduce the fall’s damage to 0.

Languages. You can speak, read and write in Solar Trade Common and Verdisian.

Wednesday Comics: DC, November 1981 (wk 1 pt 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! I'm a day later than my usual Wednesday post, but I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of  August 6, 1981. 

Arak Son of Thunder #3: Thomas and Colon/DeZuniga have Arak and Malagigi trying to help a village under the thumb of an evil sorcerer after granting mercy to a dying brigand and taking him home. The sorcerer sends a knight to kill them, who turns out to be Valda, who will become a regular here. Malagigi frees Valda from ensorcellment, but greedy villagers turn on them, and take them to the sorcerer for reward. They get killed for their initiative, and the sorcerer forces Valda and Arak to fight to the death. Arak resists the sorcerer's control enough to send a tomahawk at Valda which she easily ducks, but the sorcerer takes a blow to the skull. After dispatching the wizard, the trio heads on their way. Valda wears a mail shirt here like it's a mini-dress. She gets pants in later stories.

Batman #341: Conway and Novick bring Terrence Thirteen from the pages of Ghosts to Gotham. Both kids and cop are saying Wayne Manor is haunted. Gordon wants to investigate but Bruce is afraid the entrance to the old Batcave will be discovered and declines to allow it. He heads out to the mansion as Batman to make sure all the Batcave entrances are closed. Gordon shows up anyway with some of his men and Dr. Thirteen. Batman plays "ghost" for a bit, trying to distract them, but that only makes Thirteen more curious. Then, Batman discovers that the Man-Bat is squatting in the batcave. To be continued.

The next story is kind of novel. It invites the reader to try to solve the murder mystery with Batman. It's brought to us by Snyder and Gonzales.

The final story is a Robin solo-feature by Conway and von Eedon/DeCarlo. Grayson leaves the Hill Circus to hitchhike back to Gotham. He tales a ride from a guy with a scarred face who turns out to be involved in a Satanic cult!

DC Comics Presents #39: Pasko and Staton team-up Supes with Plastic Man, and it's very much a continuation of the goofy style of their defunct Plastic Man strip in Adventure Comics. The two heroes bring in the Toyman and two Acme City (I wonder when this homebase for Plas was dropped?) crooks, Dollface and Fliptop, who have stolen one of Toyman's toys, a wind-up fake dog, to help in a bank robbery. I feel like this version of Plastic Man might work better as an adult cartoon on HBOMax. 

The "What Ever Happened To..." backup we catch up with Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu. Mainly, this story by Barr and Saviuk seems to be tying up loose story-ends from his previous appearances. I would imagine it certainly sets up Bronze Tiger for further 80s stuff.

Flash #303: Sorry Bates and crew, but this ending of the Henry Allen storyline is silly and underwhelming. It turns out, that Barry's dad briefly died  before CPR after the car crash and the Top's spirit just happened to be around to enter his body. The villains' plan is to cause the Flash's heart to stop, so the Top can migrate to his young, toned body. The Flash tricks them, though, and the Top's spirit goes wherever, and Henry Allen is back in control of his own body. Maybe with a magic based villain this plot would have worked better, but with the Top?

In the Firestorm backup by Conway and Broderick, we tread water so the plot doesn't advance much over the reveal regarding Ronnie's girlfriend's sister being the Hyena at the end of last issue. Here, we are left with a cliffhanger with Hyena about to attack her sister.

G.I. Combat #236: The first Haunted Tank story is overstuffed with a sadistic German commander taking prisoners only to execute them and some holdout Germans from World War I hiding out in a French forest. Our heroes lose another tank and learn (again) that war sucks, y'all. O.S.S. operatives go hang-gliding to stop an an experimental u-boat armed with a nuclear warhead about to leave to destroy New York. Then it's back to the Philippines as MacArthur leaves, shadowed by a PT boat trying to make sure he gets to Australia safely. They succeed in their mission, but give their lives to do so. Kashdan gives Kanigher a break as he teams with Vicatan for a story about a spy who fails to keep the French German collaborators from getting a briefcase--which was always the plan since it leads the Allies to their hideout. The last Haunted Tank story has Slim getting to drive something faster and sleeker than a tank--a liberated 1935 Italian Hispano-Suiza. They still manage to take out a German tank.  

Ghosts #106: Kanigher and Giffen open the issue with the story of an American fencing champ in Scotland, who duels the ghost of a Scottish hero to win a sword, but winds up freeing the ghost from his punishment. Kelly and Carrillo follow-up with a piece about an archeologist and his Seminole ally against a ghost Conquistador and his magic sword. Then there's a Snyder and Trinidad story that is neither a ghost story, nor a horror story. 

The last story, by Gonzales and Sech, tells the tale of a guy who murders a good Samaritan preacher to get the money he gives out to help the homeless, only to find himself haunted by the preacher's ghost and eventually possessed by him (I guess), so that the murderer becomes the new Samaritan.

Jonah Hex #54: After divesting Hex of his wife and kid (at least for a time), Fleisher wastes no time in getting him back to Old West adventuring. He's asked by a Mexican Colonel to infiltrate the hideout of his old enemy El Papagayo. He does, but Papagayo catches him and puts him in a death trap: a well where a rope will slowly tighten and strangle him. Hex escapes with the aid of another of the Colonel's agents, Papagayo's girl, but before he can return to report what he found out, he runs up against some ex-Confederates looking for him for his old enemy, Turnbull.

In the Tejano backup by Mishkin/Cohn and Veitch/Yeates, the Mexican Army plans to hand over Tejano to their Comanche allies. On the way, Tejano realizes a boyhood friend of his is with the Mexican forces, and they reminisce about a Comanche youth who's life they saved after they took back the horses he had stole. It turns out that boy is now the Comanche chief and far from being grateful for what they did, he feels Tejano humiliated him before his tribe. Uh oh.

The Invisible Monster Revealed!

 Last session, our heroes took a job to salvage the luxury liner Aurora Queen from the Belt for an insurance company. They find the ship damaged and were unable to locate many passengers. The injured Captain told them a vicious invisible monster was stalking the ship!

The cast:
Jones: human, ex-soldier
Lor' el-Am: Hadozee engineer
Mitchell: another human and ex-Space Marine
Trzkt: Vrusk scientist

The team used the ships internal comms (powered by emergency power) to make a call for other survivors. They heard from two: Big game hunter, Gareth Dugal and actress Vena Kallor who were barricaded on deck three. They decided to first find a means of making the invisible monster visible. They searched the galley for flour with no luck. They settled for a seltzer bottle. They then proceeded to engineering to try to get the power back on. This required splitting the group: Lor'el and Mitchell stayed in engineering and Trzkt and Jones went back to the electrical board on the bridge. They managed to get the power back up, allowing Lor'el to notice insectoid creatures in an open cargo hold!

The creatures turn out to be petrified specimens, but they are fearsome in appearance. The party also finds locked boxes, which they break open. One contains a number of unusual gems.  Another has archeological artifacts, and the last one has more petrified animals.

Taking the gems with them, they decide to head toward deck 3. Lor'el has a grease gun they hope to use to reveal the creature. On deck two, they find more evidence of struggle but no bodies. The creature attacks, and Jones tries to appease it with the gems (maybe they are its eggs?), but the creature shatters several and scatters the others they fight, and Lor'el is wounded, but the creature is forced to run from their atom rifles. It hides in a room, but they run in after it. Lor'el delivers the killing blow with a monkeywrench, and the giant creatures topples onto her and Jones, requiring Mitchell's help to get them out.

They free the actor and the hunter from deck 3. There are no other survivors. In the aftermath, the Captain manages to spin things in his favor and downplay the incident, saving the insurance company money, but keeping the party from a big payday. Taine is impressed with them though, and becomes a partner with them, funding a ship, provided they do work or him when he needs them to.